Court affirms suppression in drug case

SANDPOINT — The Idaho Court of Appeals is upholding a lower court’s order to suppress evidence in a drug case against a Montana man.

Irvin Cain Ray arrested last year for felony possession of marijuana and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia. He was a passenger in a pickup truck driven by a relative who mistakenly believed he was being pulled over by an Idaho State Police trooper, according to the arrest report.

Trooper Jeff Jayne was attempting to stop the vehicle that was traveling directly ahead of the rig Ray was in.

All three vehicles stopped in a turnout on Highway 200 east of Clark Fork and Jayne maneuvered around the Ray vehicle and pulled behind Subaru he meant to stop.

Jayne exited his patrol vehicle and approached Ray’s vehicle to advise the driver that he was free to move along, but detected the pungent aroma of marijuana coming from the cab of the pickup.

Ray, a 56-year-old from Heron, was arrested after a pipe and small amount of pot were found in his pockets. A backpack in the passenger side of the pickup truck held more than 8 ounces of marijuana.

Ray’s defense counsel moved to suppress the drug evidence, arguing that it was the fruit of an unlawful detention. First District Judge Steve Verby held that Jayne’s activation of his overhead lights amounted to a command that the driver stop under state traffic laws.

And although Jayne maneuvered around Ray’s vehicle, the act of walking back to it constituted a seizure because a reasonable person would not feel free to leave at that point.

However, Verby ruled that the trooper had no probable cause to stop Ray’s vehicle and his actions constituted an unlawful detention mandating the suppression of evidence. With the evidence suppressed, the cases against Ray were dismissed, according to 1st District Court records.

The Idaho Attorney General’s Office appealed Verby’s ruling on the motion to suppress, but only in the misdemeanor case. The state was apparently unaware of the separate felony case, the appeals court noted.

The state argued that a driver who yields to a police vehicle with activated overhead lights and chooses not to continue on their way after the police vehicle passes by is not seized for purposes of the Fourth Amendment.

But appellate Judge John Melanson held that Jayne had no articulable facts which justify a suspicion that criminal conduct had either occurred or was about to.

“Because the officer admits that he did not possess reasonable suspicion based on specific articulable facts that Ray was, had been, or was about to be engaged in criminal activity, any seizure of Ray would have been unreasonable,” Melanson wrote in an opinion published on Friday.

Judge Sergio Gutierrez concurred with Melanson, while Judge Pro Tem Alan Schwartzman dissented because Jayne testified that he had no intention of investigating the truck’s occupants until he smelled marijuana.

“Under these circumstances there is no constitutional requirement that an officer motion for a person to leave by hand signal and flashlight in order to avoid the strictures of an unlawful seizure,” Schwartzman wrote.